Regular readers of obituaries know the clichés—the departed were courageous, charitable, devoted to their families.

Then there was the death notice for Wayne Brockey, a retired wood-plant manager in Klamath Falls, Ore. The obituary, written by a grandson, opens by alluding to the deceased’s penchant for ordering gadgets and clothing touted by TV pitchmen: “QVC lost a loyal customer on Sept. 28, 2016.”

Wayne Brockey

It also noted that “in retirement, many could describe Wayne as an old grump.”

An obituary for
Allen Lee Franklin,
who died in a motorcycle accident in Virginia in February, said he was “genuine and kind” but also “probably the biggest tightwad in the mid-Atlantic region.”

Most obituaries remain more solemn, but funeral directors have noted an increase in those that are a bit playful—tributes acknowledging that people tend to be mixed bags and that few are candidates for sainthood.

Obituaries published by U.S. newspapers or websites over the past few years describe deceased relatives as “cantankerous,” “grouchy,” “demanding old fart,” “sore loser” and “pain in the butt.”

One possible reason for warts-and-all obituaries is that social media have conditioned people to share more with strangers. Americans have grown “more open and apt to have a sense of humor rather than denial about death,” said
Susan Soper,
author of “ObitKit,” an obituary-writing guidebook. More also want to “celebrate someone for who they are,” she said, “not some cookie-cutter person.”

Newspapers increasingly leave it to families to compose their own tributes, often published for a fee. Papers typically assign reporters to write obituaries only for the most prominent people, and as their staffs shrink they are becoming more selective. Many notices end up on funeral-home websites or sites such as Legacy.com.

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Aaron Brockey,
a grandson of Wayne Brockey, the QVC customer, had never written an obituary before his grandfather’s. “We joke a lot” in the family, he said, so it made sense to mention his grandfather’s endearing foibles.

Terri Holzgang,
Mr. Brockey’s eldest daughter, said her father would have wanted an unvarnished obituary rather than “something more mushy.”

Tony Franklin
took on the tough assignment of writing about the death of his brother, Allen, at age 26 in a motorcycle crash. The funeral director said the obituary needed to be completed soon, he said, so “I just wrote it as it came to me.”

He wrote: “His family constantly warned him about the dangers of riding motorcycles but he was incredibly stubborn. Allen was a wonderful young man and was loved by everyone he met, despite his incessant need to argue with anyone about anything.”

The late Allen Franklin, whose brother wrote he was ‘probably the biggest tightwad in the mid-Atlantic region,’ with his fiancée, Mikayla Brooks.
Photo:
Franklin family

When he was writing the obituary, Mr. Franklin said, he still felt angry at his brother for risking his life but also wanted to capture his personality. “I guess they usually do sort of a generic obituary, but it just didn’t seem very fitting for Allen because he wasn’t a generic guy.”

Kimberly Johnson,
a freelance writer in Mooresville, N.C., adored her father-in-law,
William Wafer,
who died in May 2016, so she offered to write his obituary. Along with his many accomplishments, she recorded for posterity that he could be “raunchy and charmingly vulgar” and “enjoyed his boxed wine from a jelly jar.” During meals with polite company, he liked to liven things up by discussing the art of castrating roosters.

Susan Sagan
was determined to pay tribute to the sarcastic humor of her son,
Noah Altimus
of Latrobe, Pa., after he died of a drug overdose in November at age 27. “He loved the Pittsburgh Penguins, playing videogames, our dog, Lizzy, and chicken,” she wrote. “He hated lifting weights, but did it anyway, then had a cigarette.”

The family of
David Schlang,
Scottsdale, Ariz., who died in November, lauded his generosity and athleticism but also said he was a bit of a pack rat. “He left behind a legacy, including a lot of stuff that his wife and daughters have no idea what to do with,” his wife,
Dayna Schlang,
wrote.

“So, if you’re in the market for golf clubs, golf balls, general sporting equipment, random electronics, CDs, cassettes, and LPs,” she wrote, “you should wait an appropriate amount of time, and then get in touch.” Friends took her up on the offer, she said.

Some people write their own obituaries in advance and admit to a few mistakes.
Jeffrey Lee Adams
of Springfield, Ohio, who died in December at age 63, confided: “I wasn’t the greatest guy but then I don’t think I was quite the worst. I want to apologize to the people that I regrettably did not express my feelings to because I felt it would interfere with my selfish goals. Now I realize how immature that was.”

He added: “Please don’t mourn me; talk about the goofy stuff I did.”

Lynn Eggers
wrote two obituaries for her mother,
Rebecca Eggers,
who died 15 years ago in Bemidji, Minn. One was serious and traditional, designed to avoid offense. The other said her mother seldom got up early enough to attend her Episcopal church and was “never quiet about her dislike for kitchens and cooking.” While attending Sullins College in Virginia, she “learned to smoke and acquired a record number of demerits.”

Lynn Eggers arranged for both versions to be printed in the Bemidji newspaper but sent only the straight one to Jackson, Tenn., where her mother grew up, because she wasn’t sure relatives there would appreciate the humor.

Though there is always the risk of offending relatives, “you can be truthful without being hurtful,” said
Kay Powell,
a former obituary editor for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. For instance, she said, “suppose they were a terrible bore. You say, ‘He was a raconteur.’ That means he was telling stories all the time.”